Chapter 6: The Dockside Job
The salt-stiffened sheets were a testament to the night before. Alex woke to the smell of sea air and Alyna’s skin, the twin scents tangled together. She was already awake, propped on an elbow, watching the gulls wheel past their window. The fierce desperation of their celebration had settled into a soft, sated quiet.
“Sprocket’s coin won’t last forever,” she said, her voice morning-rough. “We need a real job. Not just a one-time crate grab.”
He nodded, stretching. The memory of the exploding ship, the cold shock of the bay water, the weight of the gold pouch—it was a good memory, but a fleeting one. “The docks,” he said. “Someone always needs muscle or a steady bow.”
They dressed in practical gear, the leathers still damp in places. Downstairs, the common room of The Salty Dog was quieter, host to a few hungover patrons and the smell of frying eggs. They ate quickly, then stepped out into Ratchet’s organized chaos.
The docks were a world of their own. Long, wooden piers thrust into the bay like greedy fingers, each crowded with ships of every make: sleek Horde schooners flying the crimson banners of Orgrimmar, grimy Alliance freighters, and the ubiquitous, rust-streaked goblin vessels that seemed held together by rivets and audacity. The air was a symphony of shouted orders, creaking hulls, and the shriek of winches hauling cargo.
They moved through the crowd, Alyna’s eyes scanning not for danger, but for opportunity. She pointed with her chin towards a larger pier where a commotion was brewing. A goblin, his emerald-green skin flushed with agitation, was waving his arms at a hulking orcish first mate.
“I paid for a sealed manifest! This is not sealed! This is—this is leaking!” the goblin shrilled.
The orc shrugged, a massive roll of his shoulders. “Your problem once it’s on the dock. Contract says delivered. It’s delivered.”
As the orc stomped away, the goblin kicked a leaking barrel in frustration, then yelped and hopped on one foot. Alyna approached, her expression neutral. “Looks like you’ve got a delivery problem.”
The goblin whirled, his large eyes narrowing. “What’s it to you, sin’dorei? You selling towels?”
“We’re selling solutions,” Alex said, stepping up beside her. He kept his voice even. “Guard work, retrieval, secure transport.”
The goblin, whose nameplate read ‘Gizzik Quickcoin’, looked them up and down. His gaze lingered on Alyna’s daggers, on the well-worn grip of Alex’s bow. The calculation in his eyes was almost audible. “Secure transport, huh? You got a ship?”
“We don’t need a ship,” Alyna said. “We need a client who doesn’t want his next shipment to end up decorating the pier. Or stolen.”
Gizzik’s expression shifted. He lowered his voice, stepping closer. The smell of ozone and cheap cologne wafted off him. “I might have a… sensitive situation. A competitor. Let’s call him Spanners. He’s been… intercepting my specialty imports from Booty Bay. Nothing illegal, of course!” he added quickly. “Just rare. Profitable. The last three shipments haven’t arrived. My clients are unhappy. My profit margin is weeping.”
“You want us to find the shipments?” Alex asked.
“I want you to ensure the next one gets to my warehouse. Personally. From the moment it touches Ratchet soil to the moment it’s behind my lock. No dockside ‘inspections’, no unfortunate crate collapses, no suspicious diversions.” Gizzik’s smile was all teeth. “You look like people who understand the value of discrete force.”
They negotiated a price. It was solid, upfront half, half on delivery. Gizzik handed over a scrap of parchment with a schedule—the Seafury, a goblin runner, due at Pier Three at sundown.
The rest of the day was spent in preparation. They checked their gear, bought a handful of cheap, corrosive bolt-caps from a tinker—"For creating distracting leaks, not for people! Probably!" the vendor cackled—and scouted the route from Pier Three to Gizzik’s warehouse, a rust-colored building nestled in a canyon of similar structures. The path was a maze of back-alley shortcuts and crowded main thoroughfares, each offering a hundred places for an ambush.
As the sun began to bleed into the sea, turning the bay to copper, they took up position. Alyna melted into the deep shadow of a tarpaulin-draped crane, becoming just another piece of dock clutter. Alex found a perch on the roof of a chandlery, with a clear line of sight to the gangplank of the Seafury. He nocked an arrow, the fletching cool against his cheek.
The ship arrived with a belch of black smoke, docking with a shriek of metal on wood. The unloading began, a line of weary sailors and automated loaders moving crates. Their target was marked by a specific symbol: a stylized grinning gnomish face, Gizzik’s brand. It was a medium-sized crate, unassuming. Alex watched as two dockworkers maneuvered it onto a wheeled cart.
He gave a low, sharp whistle—the all-clear.
Alyna drifted from her shadow, falling into step behind the cart as if she were just another dockhand. Alex kept pace from above, moving silently across the rooftops, his bow half-drawn.
They made it two blocks before the ambush hit.
It wasn’t subtle. Three figures peeled away from a refuse pile in the alley the cart was rolling into. Two were goblins, wiry and armed with nasty-looking wrenches. The third was a dwarf, his beard braided with copper wires, hefting a heavy machinist’s hammer.
“Evening, friends,” the lead goblin, presumably Spanners, chirped. “You’ve got something that belongs to my business partner. We’ll be taking it off your hands. No charge!”
The cart driver, a paid hand of Gizzik’s, froze, his eyes wide.
Alyna didn’t break stride. “Your partner’s name on the manifest?” she asked, her voice conversational.
“Manifests are for people who pay taxes,” Spanners sneered. “Now step aside, knife-ears, before you get—“
The sentence ended in a gurgle. Alyna was simply there, one dagger buried to the hilt in the goblin’s shoulder, not a killing blow but a devastating one. She whirled, using his body as a pivot, and kicked the second goblin square in the chest, sending him sprawling into a pile of empty crates.
The dwarf roared and charged, hammer high.
From the rooftop, Alex exhaled and released.
The arrow took the dwarf in the meat of his hammer arm. He bellowed, more in surprise than pain, the hammer clattering to the stones. He looked up, spotting Alex, his face a mask of fury.
Alyna closed the distance. She was a blur of controlled motion. She didn’t go for kills—a slash across a thigh here, a pommel strike to a temple there. In seconds, the ambush was neutralized, groaning on the ground. The whole fight had taken less than ten heartbeats.
She wiped a blade on Spanners’ shirt. “Tell your partner his shipping rates are a crime,” she said coolly. “And that Gizzik’s got new management. Now crawl away before I decide to check your pockets.”
They didn’t need telling twice. The dwarf yanked the arrow from his arm with a curse and staggered off after his accomplices.
The rest of the journey was tense but uninterrupted. They delivered the crate to a sweating, gleeful Gizzik in his warehouse, the heavy lock clicking shut behind it.
“Marvelous! Efficient!” he crowed, counting out the second half of their payment. “You’ve made a powerful friend today! And cost a rival a powerful sum. Here.” He tossed Alyna two small brass tokens. “Admission to the Float. Tonight. Consider it a bonus. Everyone who’s anyone ends up there.”
The Float was exactly what it sounded like: a massive, barnacle-crusted barge permanently moored at the end of the farthest pier, lit by garish pink and green lanterns. The sound of off-tune music and raucous laughter spilled across the water. It was a den for those who operated in Ratchet’s grey spaces—successful smugglers, independent captains, mercenaries between wars.
They cleaned up and went, curiosity getting the better of them. Inside was a haze of pipe smoke and salt. A band of forsaken musicians sawed away at a jaunty tune in the corner. They found a small table near a porthole, the thick glass distorting the lights of the town.
Alyna sipped her drink, watching the crowd. Her posture was relaxed, but her eyes were sharp, cataloging threats, exits, opportunities. “We did good work today,” she said.
“We did,” Alex agreed. He felt a unfamiliar surge of professional pride. It had been clean, effective. A job well done.
“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?” she mused, her gaze distant. “How long we can do this. Play guard dog for greedy little men. It’s coin. But it’s not…”
“It’s not a map,” he finished for her, repeating her words from the Barrens campfire back to her.
She looked at him, surprised, then smiled softly. “No. It’s not.”
Their moment was shattered by a presence looming over their table. It was a blood elf, but unlike any Alex had seen. Taller, his bearing rigid with military precision, his eyes glowing with a faint, unsettling amber light. He wore the subtle insignia of a Farstrider, but his gear was travel-worn. He ignored Alex completely, his gaze fixed on Alyna with a mixture of disdain and cold recognition.
“Alyna Windrunner,” he said, his voice like polished stone. “I thought that was you skulking in the shadows. Slumming with the mongrels, I see.”
Alyna went very still. Every trace of softness vanished, replaced by a defensive ice. “Lor’themar doesn’t pay you enough to frequent dives, Solaris. Go bother a murloc.”
Solaris’s lip curled. “The Regent Lord has… concerns. Loose ends from the Sunwell’s reconstruction. Unstable elements. Your name came up. In certain contexts.” His eyes flickered over her, a clinical, dismissive inspection. “They say you’ve found a new pet to follow you around. How… pragmatic. It must be easier than facing your own kind.”
The prejudice in the Sentinel’s clearing had been cold water. This was a white-hot blade, and it was being wielded by one of her own. Alex saw the wound land, saw the slight flinch she couldn’t fully suppress.
He stood up. He wasn’t as tall as the Farstrider, but he placed himself squarely between the elf and Alyna. “She’s with me,” he said, his voice low but clear in the suddenly attentive silence of their corner. “You’ve delivered your message. Now leave.”
Solaris finally deigned to look at him. The amber eyes were empty of all humanity. “The human speaks. How brave.” He leaned in slightly, his voice dropping. “Do you even know what she is, boy? What she lacks? What she hides? She is a mistake the world is still trying to correct. Enjoy your novelty. It will wear thin.”
He straightened, gave Alyna one last, pitiless look, and walked away, disappearing into the crowd.
The noise of the Float rushed back in, but their table was an island of silence. Alyna was staring at the tabletop, her jaw clenched so tight a muscle jumped. Her hand was wrapped white-knuckled around her glass.
“Alyna,” Alex began, his heart pounding with a fury that scared him.
“Don’t,” she whispered, the word brittle. She finally looked up, and the raw hurt in her eyes was worse than any anger. It was the look of someone who had been found, again, in the one place they thought they might be safe. “Just… don’t.”
She stood, throwing her coins on the table, and walked out. Not with her usual predatory grace, but with a stiff, wounded haste. Alex followed, the taste of their victory now ash in his mouth, the lights of the Float feeling not like celebration, but like a garish, mocking spotlight. The road ahead, it seemed, was never just a road. It was always lined with mirrors, and someone was always waiting to crack them.
The silence between them as they left the Float was a living thing, thick and jagged. Alyna walked ahead, her shoulders rigid, not looking back. The garish lights of the barge faded, replaced by the sporadic, practical glow of dock lanterns. Alex followed, his mind replaying Solaris’s words—a mistake the world is still trying to correct.
She didn’t stop at The Salty Dog. She kept walking, past the inn, past the last of the warehouses, until the town’s noise faded and only the shush of waves on the rocky shore remained. She finally halted at a barren point overlooking the dark sea. The wind pulled at her ponytail.
“You shouldn’t have done that,” she said, her voice flat, carried away by the breeze.
“Done what?”
“Stood up. Interrupted. He was talking to me.” She wrapped her arms around herself. “That was a Farstrider. Not some drunk dockhand. You don’t understand what that means.”
Alex moved to stand beside her, not touching. “I understood enough. He was trying to hurt you.”
“And he succeeded!” The words burst out, sharp and raw. She turned to him, her eyes glistening in the starlight. “That’s what they do. They find the crack and they pour their poison in. And you—you just gave him a new one. ‘The human’s brave little protector’. Now it’s not just me. It’s my… my taste. My poor judgment.”
“Hey,” Alex said, his own frustration rising. “My judgment’s just fine. He can think whatever he wants.”
“It’s not about thinking!” She kicked a loose stone into the water. “It’s about perception. In his eyes, you’re proof of my degradation. A human stray I’ve picked up because no one of my own kind would…” She trailed off, swallowing hard.
“Would what?” Alex asked, his voice softer now.
She didn’t answer for a long time. “You heard him. ‘Unstable elements’. That’s what they call us. The ones who don’t fit the restored, perfect Quel’thalas mold. The ones with… complications.” She laughed, a hollow sound. “I fought for that restoration. I bled for it. And the thanks I get is pity and suspicion and being hunted down in goblin ports by sanctimonious bastards with clean pedigrees.”
The word ‘us’ hung in the air. It was the first time she’d acknowledged there were others like her, and it made her isolation seem both deeper and less absolute.
“So what do we do?” Alex asked. “Run?”
“We were already running,” she sighed, the anger deflating into a weary resignation. “Just in circles, maybe. Ratchet’s too small. That Farstrider will talk. By tomorrow, everyone in the underbelly will know the ‘unstable’ sin’dorei and her human are for hire, and the wrong kind of attention will follow.” She looked north, toward the distant, unseen continents. “We need to move. Somewhere with bigger shadows to get lost in.”
“Where?”
“South. Booty Bay’s a cesspool, but it’s a crowded one. Or further. The jungle. Stranglethorn Vale.” She finally looked at him, her expression unreadable. “It’s a long way. Through bad country. You could take your share of the coin and book passage on an Alliance ship from here. Clean break. Safer.”
The offer felt like a test. A painful one. “Is that what you want?”
“I asked what you want,” she countered, her gaze unwavering.
What he wanted was suddenly, perfectly clear. It wasn’t just her. It was the cave in Winterspring, the shared silence over a campfire, the way she fought beside him without needing to look. It was the terrifying, exhilarating uncertainty of it all. “I’m with you,” he said, repeating their phrase, letting it carry all the weight it now held. “Even if the road’s bad.”
A faint, real smile touched her lips. “It’s going to be awful.”
They left Ratchet before first light, their packs heavy with supplies for a long land journey. The goblin gate guards barely glanced at them, already counting the minutes until their shift ended. The road north was easy, familiar—back through the dry, rolling plains of the Barrens. But the destination was different now, the atmosphere between them changed. The confrontation had cracked something open, and a new, tentative understanding was quietly growing in the space.
They turned west at the Crossroads, aiming for the pass through the Stonetalon Mountains. The air grew cooler, the scrubland giving way to pine and sharp, gray cliffs. They moved with efficiency, speaking little but communicating in glances and gestures honed over weeks of travel. The easy physicality was still there, but it was gentler now, less about claiming and more about contact—a hand on the small of a back to guide, a shoulder brushing another while setting up camp.
The pass descended not into more mountains, but into a nightmare. One moment the air was crisp. The next, it was a warm, wet breath that smelled of spoiled fruit and burned hair. Felwood lay below them, a forest twisted by demonic energy. The trees were grotesque parodies, their branches clawing at a perpetually twilit sky. The very ground pulsed with a faint, sickly green luminescence.
“Try not to breathe through your nose,” Alyna murmured, drawing her daggers. The casual confidence she wielded in a bar fight was gone, replaced by a focused, predatory tension. “And don’t touch anything.”
The wildlife was twisted. Rabbits with glowing eyes and extra teeth hissed from under ferns. Spiders the size of dogs skittered across their path, dripping venom that sizzled on the corrupted leaves. They fought in short, vicious bursts. Alex’s arrows took a corrupted owlbear in the throat, but it kept coming until Alyna hamstrung it and plunged a blade into its spine.
The fel energy played on their minds. Alex felt a constant, low-grade anger. He snapped at Alyna over a misplaced step, immediately hating himself. She became quieter, her movements sharper, her eyes darting at shadows only she could see.
On the second day, the satyrs found them. Three of the goat-legged demons materialized from behind gnarled trunks, their leering faces alight with malicious glee. One strummed a discordant tune on a jagged lyre that made Alex’s teeth ache.
“Fresh meat for the grove!” the lead satyr cackled, its voice like grinding glass.
There was no banter, no negotiation. Alyna exploded into motion, a blur of green cloak and shining steel. She went for the caster first, her blades a whirlwind that forced it to stumble back, dropping its lyre. Alex loosed two arrows in rapid succession at the one circling to her left. The first sank into its shoulder, the second into its thigh.
The third lunged at Alex, a wickedly curved blade aimed for his gut. He dropped his bow, barely getting his own hunting knife up in time to parry. The impact jarred his arm to the shoulder. The satyr’s breath reeked of brimstone and rot.
A dagger sprouted from its neck. It gurgled, eyes wide, and collapsed. Alyna stood behind it, yanking her blade free. The other two were already dead or fleeing. She was breathing hard, a shallow cut on her forearm oozing black-tinged blood.
“The blood’s tainted,” she said, her voice tight. She rummaged in her pack for a cleansing salve. “This place… it gets in everything.”
They treated their minor wounds quickly and moved on, not wanting to linger near the carnage. The fight had been brutal, efficient, and left them feeling unclean. That night, they camped on a rare patch of non-glowing ground, sharing a watch without speaking. The shared silence wasn’t comfortable, but it was shared. They were in the belly of it together.
After days that bled into one another, the oppressive gloom finally began to thin. The corrupted trees gave way to larger, healthier trunks, and the air lost its metallic taste. They emerged into the twilight glades of Ashenvale, and the clean scent of pine and water was almost shocking. Alex took a deep, grateful breath.
The relief was short-lived. They had barely walked a hundred yards into the towering forest when shadows detached from the trees. Night elf Sentinels, silent and stern, materialized around them in a loose ring. Their leader, her face a mask of cool disdain, lowered a glittering spear.
“The Horde road is five miles east,” she stated, her voice as cool as the forest shade. “You are far from it, sin’dorei. And you bring a human into our sacred groves. Explain.”
The tension was a wire drawn taut. Alex kept his hands away from his bow. Alyna, her posture deceptively relaxed, met the Sentinel’s gaze.
“We’re just passing through,” Alyna said, her tone respectful but firm. “Winterspring to Ratchet, and now south. We seek no quarrel with the Sentinel. We’re respecting the peace.”
The Sentinel’s eyes narrowed. “The peace is a fragile thread. Your kind has a talent for snapping threads. Why should we let a Horde agent and her… pet… wander our lands?”
Alex felt his face heat, but held his tongue. Alyna didn’t flinch.
“Because the peace holds,” she repeated, emphasis on each word. “And turning travelers away at spear-point is how threads do snap. We want only the road. We’ll take no game, touch no moonwell, speak to no one. You have my word.”
A long, silent assessment followed. The Sentinel’s gaze flicked between them, noting their travel-worn state, their wary but non-aggressive stances. The political calculation was clear: creating an incident over two dusty travelers was foolish.
“The road, then,” the Sentinel said finally, not lowering her spear. “Only the road. Stray from it, and the forest will swallow you. The peace protects you only as long as you move swiftly through it.”
They were escorted, not gently, to the main southern trade road. The Sentinels melted away as silently as they had appeared. The tension didn’t leave Alyna’s shoulders until they had walked another mile.
“See?” she muttered. “Predictable. At least the roads here are safe.”
And they were. For days, they followed the broad path under the immense, ancient trees. They encountered Kaldorei patrols who watched them with silent, unwelcoming eyes, but no more spears were leveled. The safety was a gift, but it was a cold one, wrapped in suspicion.
The forest ended abruptly. One moment, towering canopies. The next, a vast, open expanse of golden, sun-scorched grass under an endless blue sky. The Barrens. The heat was a physical weight after the cool forest.
Here, the dynamic shifted again. They passed a small Horde outpost, a cluster of mud huts and a stout wooden tower. An orc guard, his tusked face impassive, eyed Alex with open suspicion as they approached the water well.
“He’s with me,” Alyna said, her voice carrying a casual authority she never used with the Sentinels.
The orc grunted, his hand lingering near his axe. “See he stays that way. Don’t cause trouble.”
The wildlife was the main threat. They gave a prowling lion pride a wide berth. Alex felled a charging raptor with two quick shots to its open mouth. A thunder lizard’s distant stampede shook the ground, a rolling thunder that sent herds of gazelle fleeing. They skirted quillboar territory, the crude totems and porcine stench warning them away. Hyenas cackled in the ravines at night. Once, they had to backtrack to avoid a migrating herd of kodo that stretched to the horizon.
It was dangerous, but it was a clean danger. Predictable. They fell back into their rhythm, their partnership. The shared isolation of the open land began to sand down the sharp edges left by Felwood and the Sentinels. One evening, watching the sunset paint the mesas in fiery orange, Alyna spoke unprompted.
“You handled yourself well. In the woods. Both sets of woods.”
Alex shrugged, poking their small fire. “Didn’t do much. Just stood there looking harmless.”
“That’s the hard part,” she said softly. “Not reacting. Letting the poison just… slide off.” She was quiet for a moment. “Thank you. For not making it worse.”
It was as close to an apology for her outburst at the shore as he would get. He nodded, accepting it. “Where to after this? Stranglethorn?”
“Yeah. The jungle.” A ghost of her old smirk returned. “It’s humid, full of giant snakes and pirates, and everyone there is too busy trying to kill each other to care what we are. Sounds like home.”
He laughed, and the sound felt good in the vast quiet. The road ahead was treacherous, unknown. But for the first time since the Float, it felt like they were walking it side-by-side, not one leading the other. The cracks were still there, but they weren’t falling apart. They were just part of the map now.